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Ruth Bader Ginsburg to skip State of the Union address for speaking engagement

January 30, 20186:34 am

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, shown in January 2018, fulfilled a promise to a college friend in making her University of Buffalo appearance. (Robin Marchant/Getty Images)

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(JTA) — Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg will miss the State of the Union speech by President Donald Trump due to a speaking engagement.

On Tuesday night, at the time of the address, Ginsburg will be speaking at Roger Williams University in Rhode Island. She has been on an extensive speaking tour during the high court’s current monthlong recess, The Associated Press reported.

Ginsburg also did not attend Trump’s address to Congress in January 2017; fellow justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas also skipped the speech. She attended all eight of President Barack Obama’s State of the Union addresses. It is not unusual for the justices to skip such addresses, however, according to the AP.

Ginsburg spoke last week at the Sundance Film Festival, where a documentary about the justice was screened, in a conversation/interview with Nina Totenberg of National Public Radio. She also is scheduled to speak at law schools and synagogues during her speaking tour, the AP reported.

Ginsburg, 84, the oldest member of the court, criticized Trump in July 2016 when he was the presumptive Republican presidential nominee in several interviews, calling him “a faker” and saying that he “has no consistency about him.”

“He says whatever comes into his head at the moment. He really has an ego,” she said.

Trump responded in a tweet, saying that Ginsburg “has embarrassed all by making very dumb political statements about me. Her mind is shot — resign!”

Ginsburg has written two of the court’s four decisions this session and reportedly has hired law clerks through 2020, according to the AP.